The end of this issue - last post by me anyhow. Seems to be a bandwidth issue on a segment of the BBN-Planet network.
I'm not sure if their theory is correct. Routing to www.apple.com from EUnet/UUNET and from carpeNet/Nacamar both go through the same Palo Alto link, but look at this ping -c 20 -q www.apple.com .. * via EUnet/UUNET --- www.apple.com ping statistics --- 20 packets transmitted, 13 packets received, 35% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max = 2645.188/2724.840/3156.298 ms * via carpeNet/Nacamar --- www.apple.com ping statistics --- 20 packets transmitted, 20 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max = 155.404/180.195/249.367 ms The above was yesterday after I saw the report. The guy at seicom.net who posted the original problem is also going via UUNET in Frankfurt (same as EUnet). Cheers, Ray